Bowlby and Attachment Theory: Insights and Legacy

John Bowlby (February 26, 1907 – September 2, 1990) was a psychoanalyst and psychologist who founded the core concepts of attachment theory. This article contains all you need to know about John Bowlby and his contributions to modern-day psychology, parenting, and research.

Attachment theory is certainly en vogue in recent years – and for good reason. It provides a valuable framework for understanding how early bonds contribute to adult patterns of behavior in relationships.

But what are the origins of attachment theory? And why was it so seminal for the field of psychology?

Attachment theory can be attributed to the work of John Bowlby, hence, why it’s often referred to as “Bowlby’s attachment theory.” Bowlby was a British psychologist and psychoanalyst who found that psychoanalytic theory couldn’t account for the role of the early caregiver-child dynamic on functioning.

To help you fully understand John Bowlby’s contributions to attachment theory, this article covers:

• A brief biography of John Bowlby’s early life and career
• How Bowlby devised attachment theory
• The stages of Bowlby’s attachment theory (including those of Schaffer and Emerson)
• How we form working models based on our attachment and what this means for behaviors
• Social learning theory’s contributions to the understanding of attachment behaviors
• John Bowlby’s other contributions to the field of psychology and childcare
• The modern-day perspective on attachment theory

As a note, psychologists Mary Ainsworth and Mary Main also contributed significantly to attachment theory as we know it today – including the categorization of the four different attachment styles.

Brief Biography and Background of John Bowlby

Edward John Bowlby was born to an upper middle-class London family in 1907. Bowlby was predominantly looked after by nannies and, as one of six children, found that he had little interaction with his parents. The ethos in his childhood home was that too much affection and attention spoils a child, so he found himself in a boarding school at the young age of seven. Bowlby recalled his school years as a traumatic experience, which no doubt contributed to his adult interests in developmental psychology.

Additionally, aside from his early experiences, Bowlby was no stranger to further effects of separation and loss as he witnessed the devastating effects of both world wars on families.

John Bowlby’s Early Career

After graduating from Cambridge University, where he studied psychology, Bowlby was inspired to volunteer his knowledge and, at age 21, dedicated himself to looking after troubled children at a residential school. The school focused on providing fulfilling relationships for the children in its care, promoting their chances at healthy social and emotional functioning.

Reflecting on his experiences, Bowlby recalled the six months he worked in the school as the most valuable months of his life. He stated: “When I was there, I learned everything that I have ever known.” It’s, therefore, clear that the pastoral climate this school provided for children underpinned the foundations of Bowlby’s attachment theory.

John Bowlby’s Later Career

Bowlby’s experiences in the residential school inspired him to train as a psychiatrist. He worked at the British Psychoanalytic Institute under the influence of highly respected psychologist and founder of play therapy, Melanie Klein. These years training as a psychoanalyst created a sense of dissonance for Bowlby: psychoanalysis attributes emotional distress predominantly to inner functioning. However, Bowlby’s experiences at the residential school taught him differently.

After his time at the British Psychoanalytic Institute, Bowlby served as a medic during World War II shortly before marrying his wife and having four children. Once the war was over, Bowlby started the next phase of his career as director of the Tavistock Clinic. Furthermore, as an extra string to his bow of contributions to the field of mental health, he became a mental health consultant to the World Health Organisation (WHO) in 1950.

Now that we have an understanding of Bowlby’s early years and career, let’s consider his contributions to attachment theory.

John Bowlby Attachment Theory

During his years of training at the British Psychoanalytic Institute, Bowlby’s dissatisfaction with psychoanalysis’ and behaviorism grew. Instead of aligning with the stance that emotional problems can be attributed solely to internal processes, he postulated that such issues arise from how the child interacts with their environment in their early years. This led to a professional disagreement with his mentor, Melanie Klein.

Bowlby’s time working with children with behavioral issues inspired a strong interest in child development – especially in how periods of separation from a mother figure affect a child. During his time at the Tavistock Clinic and as a mental health consultant for WHO, Bowlby coined the term “affectionless psychopathy.” This term was used to describe how children’s perceptions of being abandoned, rejected, and unloved contributed to delinquent behaviors.

Continuing with this focus on the mother-child bond, Bowlby developed a book based on his work with homeless children called Child Care and the Growth of Love. This book proposed that the love of a mother is as important for a child’s emotional health and development as nutrients are for physical health.

Bowlby furthered his concept of attachment by considering scientific contributions from areas such as developmental psychology, cognition, and evolutionary psychology, amongst others.

Of course, we now understand that it is not just the mother that can provide a safe, meaningful bond for children (other caregivers such as a father factor in). However, Bowlby’s assertions created the important groundwork for understanding how early relationships impact psychological functioning in later life.

Stages of Bowlby’s Attachment Theory

As John Bowlby was predominantly interested in the mother-child bond and its influence on the child’s emotional well-being, Bowlby’s stages of attachment primarily focus on each developmental stage within this bond.

Bowlby’s stages of attachment are:

Due to how Bowlby’s stages of attachment focus on the caregiver-child bond, Schaffer and Emerson developed stages of attachment that focus on wider social bonds. Schaffer and Emerson’s stages of attachment take into account that children form multiple bonds throughout development, and that these bonds vary in intensity.

It can be helpful to consider both models and how they reflect the different perspectives of attachment and development.

Schaffer and Emerson’s stages of attachment are:

Bowlby’s Internal Working Model

Working models are considered to be stable mental constructs that operate outside of mental awareness to help us interpret and predict our environment – as well as guide our emotions and actions within it.

According to Bowlby, a child develops an internal working model or mental representation of how relationships work based on their early bond with their primary caregivers. This internal working model becomes the template for how the child believes relationships, in general, work, including how they will be treated within them. By creating such a template, the child feels as though they can predict and control their environment.

Moreover, Bowlby posited that this internal working model of attachment is carried with us throughout life – into adolescence and adulthood – and guides our patterns of behavior. In other words, our adult relationships echo the patterns of our early bonds with caregivers as our brains are wired to expect a continuation of behaviors.

Internal working models are complex and composed of interrelated elements. These elements are:

• Memories of early attachment experiences
• The beliefs and expectations we form about the self and others
• Our attachment-related needs and goals
• Behavioral strategies exhibited within relationships

Yet, even though the components of working models create a stable pattern of thinking and acting, they are not invulnerable to change. With exposure to change, recognition of patterns and how they formed, and redefining past experiences, it is possible to alter internal working models.

Bowlby and Social Learning Theory

Although Bowlby did not create the concept of Social Learning Theory (SLT) (it was conceptualized by Albert Bandura in the 1970s), SLT did contribute to the understanding of attachment behaviors.

SLT is considered an evolution of traditional learning theory (more commonly known as behaviorism) as it acknowledges the mental processes involved in behaviors.

Bandura believed that humans constantly process information, especially concerning how our behaviors have direct social consequences. Therefore, children learn and develop behaviors and skills through observing and imitating the actions of others.

For this reason, observational learning became a focal concept of SLT. We learn, develop skills, and form beliefs and attitudes through observing other people’s behaviors and the feedback they receive. In turn, when we deem another’s actions to have positive consequences, we model our behaviors on those of this person.

Attachment behaviors could be attributed to SLT and modeling as children observe their caregiver’s affectionate behaviors and emotional responses and imitate these. Furthermore, caregivers usually give their children instructions about how to behave in social interactions and reward them based on what they deem to be appropriate behaviors.

The different attachment styles can be explained through social learning theory in the following ways:

John Bowlby’s Other Contributions to Psychology

Bowlby’s attachment theory and other contributions to the field of psychology have had a profound ripple effect on the understanding of childcare practices worldwide. Even people who have never heard of Bowlby will still be aware of his influence, such as his opinions on young children being raised in proximity to their caregivers, as well as his impact on the age children start school.

Bowlby’s other contributions to psychology include:

• Advice for secure caregiving to parents and caregivers
• More pastoral, fulfilling relationships for children in alternative care (such as in foster homes or care homes)
• A better understanding of the role of alternative attachment figures, such as teachers, therapists, and romantic partners in adulthood
• An impact on legal procedures in the family court system as it now takes into account the systems within a family and how they affect the actions of young offenders
• A reduction in the number of orphanages, fewer closed adoptions, and more open-door policies for family members in hospitals
• An increase in awareness of how maternal stress and post-natal depression can impact the mother-child bond
• Raised understanding around facilitating skin-to-skin contact between a mother and baby after delivery to promote the bonding process

Aside from these direct contributions to childcare practices, Bowlby has influenced the work of many other distinguished professionals in the field of psychology. Perhaps the most noteworthy of these was his associate, Mary Ainsworth, who developed the attachment classification system of one secure and two insecure (anxious and avoidant) attachment styles based on her work on The Strange Situation experiment.

Mary Main, a postgraduate student of Ainsworth’s contributed the disorganized (known as fearful-avoidant in adulthood) attachment style. Thanks to this classification system, caregivers and professionals have a clear method of discerning attachment behaviors and devising methods of treatment.

Yet, despite these contributions to psychology and childcare, in recent articles and social media posts, there has been an increase in referring to Bowlby’s work as an “outdated theory.” Let’s discuss why exactly this is the opposite of true.

Today’s Perspectives on Bowlby’s Work

John Bowlby’s contributions to psychology will always be recognized as one of the century’s most influential theories of social, personality, and relationship development. To date, attachment theory is still described as the dominant approach to understanding early social development.

Despite often being referred to as “outdated” or “not applicable to adult situations” in certain pop-culture articles, these statements couldn’t be further from the truth. A simple Google Scholar search will reveal how research in the areas of developmental and social psychology, as well as social neuroscience, continues to expand on the concept of attachment.

In fact, there are currently more efforts being made than ever before within the scientific attachment community to rigorously test, amend, and even replace initial assumptions made by attachment theory several decades ago.

This means that new results from large-scale meta-analyses and novel investigations using state-of-the-art psychology and neuroscience methods are constantly emerging. As a prominent example, the social neuroscience of human attachment (SoNeAt) has recently been established as a novel combination of traditional psychology (for example, behavioral observation, interviews, and self-reports) and state-of-the-art neuroscience (such as physiology, endocrinology, neuroimaging, genetics, and epigenetics) tools.

Such innovations help us better understand the complex nature of attachment by revealing more about its diverse functions and neurobiological basis. Great summaries of the most recent scientific insights surrounding attachment theory can be found in neuroscientist, Dr. Pascal Vrticka’s website.

So, if at any stage you doubt the scope and scientific basis of the theory, remember that people all around the world are expanding it in different ways, every day.